Parents & Pals

Your Baby Has Colic. Your Teen Has Attitude. Bonds Can Be Forged Over This Timeless Common Ground.

April 20, 2002|By Darryl E. Owens, Sentinel Staff Writer

Last October, Trish Hill had just dropped off her son Jared at College Park United Methodist Child Development Center in Orlando when she bumped into Robin Tate, who'd just deposited her son John.

Out of courtesy, the strangers exchanged small talk. Soon, they realized the boys weren't only classmates but also neighbors.

Fresh in town from Winter Haven, Hill saw the meeting as serendipity: Their sons were acquainted, Hill was in the market for friends, and what better conversation piece for two mothers than a pair of 5-year-old perpetual motion machines?

Now, the boys are cozy, growing their friendship over playdates, Happy Meals, and fly balls as T-ball teammates on the College Park Angels, while their moms grow their friendship over watching their boys be boys.

It's certainly nothing new: Adults have been bonding over children for millennia. Often when a baby comes bouncing into a couple's life, the newly minted parents' circle of friends constricts to a tight orbit of adults who happen to be the parents of their child's friends.

In other words, as a parent, your circle of friends is often based on your child's friends. Only now, parents are more likely to meet at soccer practice.

There is no way of knowing how many parent friendship circles exist in the United States. After all, the U.S. Census Bureau doesn't bother to track such things. But family experts suspect the number of parents who have cemented bonds after meeting their children's chums at ballet class is steadily surging.

Why is no mystery. Being able to swap war stories is a key reason. But there's also a sense that with many dads and moms logging 40-plus hours at the office and shuttling children across creation for extracurricular activities, there just isn't much time left to cultivate relationships. "Who has time for anyone else?" says social psychologist Susan Newman, author of Parenting An Only Child: The Joys and Challenges of Raising Your One and Only. "Who else wants to hear about your children? Who else totally understands what your life is like?"

BALLPARK FRIENDSHIPS

For years now, Trish Hill has subscribed to that line of thinking. In Winter Haven, she worked for State Farm Insurance and enrolled her sons, Justin, 7, and Jared, 5 in a Christian school. Between working and raising her boys, there wasn't much time for socializing.

"I wasn't at work to make friends," says Hill, 32, "but to succeed in what I was doing."

Even so, occasionally Hill felt a tug, a need to hang with the girls. Her antenna shot up one day when she saw a sign posted at her sons' school touting something called "Girls Night Out."

Turned out GNO was a group of mothers there who bonded monthly over a movie, supper or a juicy chat. Potty training and ideas for persuading tots to eat their veggies came up, but the group also talked about topics other than Pokeman.

"I started getting to know the women," Hill says. The group "provided a good support environment -- the children were the exact same age, so you could compare notes."

Some parents are comparing notes while moving in even larger friendship circles.

Early on, Glen and Sandy Watson involved their kids in sports. Life fell into a routine: The Watsons, both employed by Florida Power, would dash home and then shuttle daughter Ashley, 13, to softball, gymnastics or cheerleading, and son Glen, 11, to soccer or baseball practice.

Things are more hectic now with the Apopka Little League baseball season in full swing. Almost nightly, Glen practices or plays -- weekends too.

That leaves the Watsons little time for becoming chummy with anyone save the folks going hoarse in the bleachers.

The ballfields are "where we live," says Watson, 35, of Apopka. "Our lives are our kids, and sports is a main function of it."

In real sense, the friendships born at ballparks border on the familial. Parents support each other's youngsters, swap war stories, and yes, squabble.

"I think that sometimes the arguments come from being around each other so much of the time," Watson says. "You may have some friends that you do some things with on occasion, but since you're constantly on the go, this is the main circle of friends you have."

KIDS CHANGE EVERYTHING

For Hill, the circle of friends she enjoyed with the Girls Night Out club became more important when she became a stay-at-home mother two years ago. Many of the women were older than Hill, but motherhood bridged the generation gap.

Now, Hill is a homemaker, about 30 miles removed from Winter Haven. "I've tried to go back for a couple of Girls Nights Out," she says.

That she has gone to such lengths to maintain those friendships speaks to this: previous relationships often fade when adults become parents. It is less a matter of parents writing off their childless friends than a subtle mutual parting of the ways.